


And Then The Real Work Began

by kittydesade



Category: Dark Is Rising Sequence - Susan Cooper
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-24
Updated: 2012-12-24
Packaged: 2017-11-22 05:44:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,608
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/606435
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kittydesade/pseuds/kittydesade
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Not happily ever after, not after the end, just the next chapter in an ongoing story.</p>
            </blockquote>





	And Then The Real Work Began

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Ashura](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ashura/gifts).



Will lay on his back with his eyes closed and tasted the salt in the air. Felt the wind ruffling his shirt up over his stomach and tickling the tips of his toes, and his nose. The heat of the sun collected on his skin until he was just a hairsbreadth away from too hot, but it was all good. All part of the world.

And he was alone on the roof anyway, so there was no one to complain to and therefore no point in complaining.

No one had told him how lonely this Last Old One business would be. Sure, he had all kinds of power and knowledge and wisdom and all those other things they told him he had; Will wasn't too sure of it some days, himself. What he lacked was experience, direct and personal, and that didn't get in his way until a day like today when everything was going smoothly and he found himself with nothing to do but sit and be. And then the doubts came creeping in.

"I can't do this," he said, just to have it out loud where he could hear himself. "I can't do this, I wasn't brought up to this. I'm not a Great Old One, I'm not even special. I'm just Will Stanton. I'm just ordinary. I'm not wise or clever or..." he shook his head, laughing at himself. All right, now he was starting to sound ridiculous.

Which was the point, after all. Will heaved himself to his feet, organizing the day's work ahead in his mind.

  


  


  


Bran looked confused. Poor kid. 

That didn't help, either, that everyone had either moved on or forgotten. He knew everything that happened, he remembered it all, and there wasn't anyone he could talk to about it. Instead he was standing here a little ways away from Bran's school looking a bit like a pervert and resisting the urge to just go up and talk to the kid like he used to.

"You're a bloody idiot, Will Stanton," he told himself. "And you've got work to do." And Bran had disappeared somewhere in that self-castigating morass of thoughts, anyway. All right, then.

"Excuse me?"

Will Stanton turned slowly, because if he didn't he thought he would do something unfortunate to the poor person who'd snuck up behind him. Or not snuck, but at least came up quietly enough that he hadn't noticed him there, somehow. Who was Bran, too, for added discombobulation. "I... yes?"

"You were staring." Bran sounded both accusatory and politely inquiring, if such a balance was possible. "Was there something you wanted?"

"No..." Will started, then realized that any explanation he could give for any of the half-dozen expressions that must have been flying across his face at that moment, and all the moments prior, would be inadequate. He had to go with some form of the truth, but he didn't know what that would be. "No, it's just..."

Bran waited patiently. Along with everything else, he was good at that.

Will found himself looking, not at Bran, but at a point over his shoulder and towards the horizon, where he could see all of them laughing and talking before and know exactly what he was missing. "Have you ever had something happen to someone you care about, or, multiple people. Several someone's. And they ... go away. Either they're dead, or they have to go away, far away, where you can't go with them? And you walk around all of the places that they used to be, and it's like they're still there. You look and you can see them still there. But they're not. Have you ever..."

Stupid, Will. Your first fortnight as a Great Old Wise One and you're already making a mess of it. Bran took a step back and looked at him, nodding. "I'm sorry," he said. And it took Will a second to realize that Bran was offering him condolances for anyone he'd lost, when Bran was one of the lost, himself.

"It's all right," he shook his head. "It's not your fault."

"Well, I'm sorry, anyways."

  


  


  


He came back a few days later, just to watch. This time with a book in case anyone should think it was strange that he was lurking about, but he came back because it was something he could do to feel normal again. Bran looked over at him a couple of times, but didn't say anything.

The next day he didn't even go, and he ran into Bran anyway. At a little coffee and book shop, of all places, and the younger boy had his hands wrapped around a steaming cup and seemed to be waiting for him. Will pretended to be looking for something specific and unable to find it, just to wait him out. He wasn't supposed to talk about their experiences and adventures, he wasn't supposed to break the fog over their minds. He could. He didn't know that, but he had the feeling that he could. But he wasn't supposed to.

"Dammit, Bran," he muttered. "Why couldn't you just leave it alone."

Eventually he did order a mug of something hot, whatever was most familiar, and a couple of biscuits and sat down with what passed for his lunch to wait for Bran to gather the courage to speak to him. It didn't last long.

"I'm sorry if this is prying," he began, though he clearly had no intention of backing off if Will told him it was. "But who did you lose? At my school, I mean."

Will felt his jaw pop. He was too young to be getting arthritis, Great Old One or no. "Some friends. I didn't lose them, I mean, they're not dead. Not exactly. But I can't talk to them anymore."

"Why not?"

Bran said it with such belligerent, matter-of-fact conviction that Will had to take a moment and make sure he didn't mean anything else by it. That they weren't speaking in some sort of code. He didn't seem as though he knew what he was asking, anyway, and Will cobbled together an answer from what was left of his mind. "It's sort of a ... an official thing. They don't officially exist to me, anymore, nor me to them." And let Bran take from that what he might. Some sort of international spy ring might be thematically appropriate. Her Majesty's Secret Sorcerers.

"But that doesn't mean you can't still talk to them. I mean, unofficially. Right?" Bran leaned forward, hands folded and out of sight, though Will knew he was clutching the lining of his pockets tightly. 

And he didn't want to nod, but it was true, and he gave a cautionary look to the younger boy. Who wasn't a boy, really, not with everything he'd been and done, but Bran didn't remember that. "I suppose. I'd get into real trouble if I did, though. And not just me." He didn't know all of the consequences, and he didn't care to look, because it wasn't going to happen. He was going to get up and walk away, and they were going to forget this had ever happened.

Bran stared at him with eyes that shouldn't still be unnerving, but were. "That doesn't mean you're not going to." 

Obviously, Will thought. But his lips stuck together when he tried to make words come out, any sort of explanation for what he was doing.

Bran looked down at the surface of the table. "Sometimes I think, it must be awfully boring to do exactly as you're told all the time. I mean, if we were always supposed to do exactly as we were told, we wouldn't also be encouraged to have imagination, dreams and things, right?"

"Is that what your teachers told you?" Will might have found this amusing under other circumstances. Come to think of it, he'd gotten into trouble with exactly that kind of sophistry, before. 

He got a shy smile in return. "Not all at once, but yes." Bran put his hands on the table, flat and spread, then closed his eyes. Will leaned forward to ask what he was doing, until it entered his mind. Not what Bran was saying, but the fact of him saying it, not even something as complex as a spoken sentence. Just the impression that he had missed his friend, and why wasn't Will talking to him anymore?

Will jerked back hard enough to send his chair scraping across the floor with an eardrum-grinding sound. Bran's eyes popped open. 

"I shouldn't," he said. "You shouldn't. We shouldn't be talking." 

Please, Bran thought at him some more. I don't want to be alone. You don't want to be alone. But they made us promise to be. 

They had, too. The last lonely old guardian, and a boy whose memories of the things he had been and done filled his brain too much to hold in, while living an ordinary life. Head too full to be entirely erased. They should have thought of that when they were taking away everyone's memories, although, he supposed, if they'd taken them away they wouldn't be having this problem. Just pushed them underneath. And now they were popping up to the surface again. So, this was really their own fault, and if anyone was likely to have the memories return, if anyone had the right to know, it was the Pendragon.

Will could only imagine the trouble he was going to get into. The trouble he was getting the world into. He leaned forward and took Bran's hands in his. They were awfully cold. "It started," he said heavily. "On my birthday..."


End file.
